Album Review

A surprisingly listenable collection of environmental recordings sourced from the four corners of the world, Chris Watson's first release under his own name is a fascinating account of the sonorities to be found in nature's ceaseless performance. Instead of focusing on the potentially soothing and meditative, Watson presents such diverse settings as the South American rainforest, Kenya's Mara River, and Moray Firth in all their complicated, occasionally abrasive glory. Made by cabling ultrasensitive microphones over great distances, Stepping Into the Dark's 12 unedited cuts present nature in the raw, and stars a diversely musical cast (flies, tree frogs, moths, fishing bats, and the dense surge of heat through the awakening tropical forest).

Biography

Genre: Electronic

Years Active: '70s, '80s, '90s, '00s

Chris Watson was a founding member of late-'70s/early-'80s techno and synth-pop innovators Cabaret Voltaire and, later, ambient-industrial fusioners the Hafler Trio. In something of an odd switch, Watson left the music industry behind in the early '90s to work as a sound recordist for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Watson quickly branched out into production for film and television, and has since handled field recording for a number of nature programs, documentaries, and feature films....